Westerly Sun Column | Dive Into Shark Week

Summer is evidently quite a busy time for sharks. Not to say that they are particularly lively this time of year – I don’t know much about that – but they are certainly POPULAR during these months! Shark Week, which has been a Discovery Channel staple since 1988, returned for its 37th year this past Sunday. Just last month, on June 20th, the iconic Steven Spielberg film “Jaws” celebrated its 50th anniversary. Coincidentally, last month was also the anniversary of the earworm “Baby Shark” by Pinkfong, which was first released on June 17, 2016, and has been playing on loop in our heads ever since. If you need a distraction to get that particular song out of your head, or if you simply want to learn a bit more about our favorite deep-sea predators, the library has you covered.

My daughter has had me read “Killer Whale vs. Great White Shark”, a book in the “Who Would Win” series by Jerry Pallotta, repeatedly for weeks now, so I’d like to say I’m a bit of an expert on sharks, but there’s so much to learn! This book is a fun one for kids, which compares and contrasts the anatomies, behaviors, hunting styles, and more of these two ferocious creatures. That being said, adults looking for a bit of shark trivia may be more interested in “Sharkpedia: A Brief Compendium of Shark Lore” by Daniel C Abel, a pocket-sized treasury of more than 100 entries about these amazing animals.

If you prefer to watch something to supplement your Shark Week viewing, our collection is full of documentaries and films all about sharks. You can relive Shark Weeks of yore with compilations like “Shark Week: Sharktacular Adventures” (2018) or “Shark Week. Shark ‘n’ awe!” (2017), or enjoy a movie marathon with viewings of the four films in the “Jaws” series, or the six (!) “Sharknado” films, all of which are available through our consortium.

If you’re looking for something a bit less silly, but that will still hold your attention, there are a ton of popular science books about sharks that practically read like novels. “Chasing Shadows: My Life Tracking the Great White Shark” is one such book, an action-driven memoir by shark specialist Greg Skomal, who is called in to help when there was a scary increase in shark activity off of Cape Cod in 2012. “Big Meg: The Story of the Largest and Most Mysterious Predator That Ever Lived” by Tim Flannery is another great choice, all about the mystical, and now extinct, Megalodon. Of course, this is just the tip of the iceberg, and there are so many other fantastic books and films to feed your shark obsession, not just this week, but all year!

by Cassie Skobrak, Adult Services Librarian